-The Hindu The party recommended that Electoral bonds should be issued without any serial number or identification marks. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had pitched for greater anonymity for donors of Electoral bonds, according to a letter sent by party general secretary Bhupendra Yadav to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in August 2017 when the scheme was being drafted. This letter was obtained by activist Lokesh Batra through a Right to Information application. The...

-The Hindu If big money entirely funds elections in a secretive way, democracy as we know it will not exist The recent disclosures that the Election Commission (EC) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had expressed reservations about the Electoral Bonds scheme highlight the importance of this issue. In 2017, the then RBI Governor wrote to the then Finance Minister that “allowing any entity other than the central bank to issue...

-The Indian Express The RTI documents also show that over the 12 phases, just four cities accounted for 83 per cent of all Electoral bonds by value. Electoral bonds with denomination of Rs 1 crore accounted for more than 91 per cent of the Rs 5,896 crore raised in the first eleven of the total twelve phases over which bonds were sold by select branches of the State Bank of India.   ...

-PTI India's richest trust -- The Prudent Electoral Trust -- gave Rs 54.25 crore in donations to the party, according to the documents The BJP received Rs 356 crore in donations from an Electoral trust controlled by the Tata Group during 2018-19, according to documents submitted by the ruling party before the Election Commission. As per information provided by the BJP to the EC on October 31, it received a total ofover Rs...

-The Times of India blog Last week, NDA government succeeded in getting contentious amendments to RTI Act passed by Parliament. Social activist Aruna Roy, who was at the forefront of the movement to persuade Parliament to enact the original law, speaks to Anindo Dey about the development: * The government said the RTI Act amendments set right the anomaly of the Information Commissions, which are statutory bodies, being treated on a par...